The contrast between William James's broad, introspective "Stream of Thought" and the hyper-specific "Batman Effect" study reflects a trend in academia. Professional pressures for publishable, empirical results favor narrow, methodologically rigorous studies over grand, philosophical inquiries that are harder to test.

Nozick's thought experiment is ineffective because it doesn't engage with common-sense moral intuitions. It's a problem that only arises if one is already deeply committed to a specific, extreme utilitarian framework, making it feel absurd and irrelevant to most people.

A new scientific theory isn't valuable if it only recategorizes what we already know. Its true merit lies in suggesting an outrageous, unique, and testable experiment that no other existing theory could conceive of. Without this, it's just a reframing of old ideas.

The famous thought experiment, while popular, proved detrimental to moral psychology and ethics. It narrowed inquiry and promoted a forced, simplistic choice between consequentialist and deontological reasoning, stifling more nuanced understanding of the human mind.

Critics argue moral thought experiments are too unrealistic to be useful. However, their artificiality is a deliberate design choice. By stripping away real-world complexities and extraneous factors, philosophers can focus on whether a single, specific variable is the one making a moral difference in our judgment.

Elite thought experiments like Singer's Drowning Child are powerful because their scenarios are relatable and don't require suspending disbelief about complex conditions, unlike variations of the Trolley Problem that rely on a 'fat man' perfectly stopping a train.

The classic thought experiment is deemed ineffective because it doesn't genuinely probe a moral intuition. Instead, it merely restates the argument's premise—that people are only moral for instrumental reasons—packaging a conclusion as a speculative scenario.

Frank Jackson's 'Mary the Color Scientist' is criticized because its central premise—that someone could know 'all the physical facts' about color—is fundamentally inconceivable. This makes it difficult to draw any reliable intuitive conclusions from the scenario.

Thought experiments like the trolley problem artificially constrain choices to derive a specific intuition. They posit perfect knowledge and ignore the most human response: attempting to find a third option, like breaking the trolley, that avoids the forced choice entirely.